7 Types of Privileged Accounts that Companies must Know

Cybersecurity information seems to be everywhere. But even so, companies still cannot see cybersecurity as important. The company still believes that preventing is enough action to avoid cyber-attacks. Many companies are unaware that privileged accounts are a common target for advanced attacks. Based on a survey CyberArk Software’s Global IT security, it is known that 86 percent of large companies either do not know about their Privileged Account Security problem. At the same time, more than of them share privileged passwords internally. This would be a way for hackers to attack major corporations that aren’t aware of privileged accounts.

Types of Privileged Accounts

Privileged accounts consist of various types of the company environment. These different privileged accounts generate a significant threat to security if not protected, managed, and monitored. Here are the types of privileged accounts commonly found in company environments.

1. Local Administrative Accounts

This privileged account is a non-personal account that provides administrative access to the local host. Local administrative accounts are routinely used by IT staff to perform maintenance on workstations, servers, network devices, databases, mainframes, and others. Maintenance is performed regularly, making IT staff sometimes create the same password. This makes it an easy target for cybercriminals to hack those accounts.

2. Privileged User Accounts

A privileged user account has been given administrative access to one or more systems. Users have administrative rights, such us to the desktops that most companies utilize. Passwords often used in this category contain unique and complex passwords, making them difficult to hack and allowing managed systems to monitor their use.

3. Domain Administrative Accounts

This account has administrator privileges on all of the domain’s workstations and servers. Generally, the percentage of these accounts is small because it provides the most extensive access across the network. This account also has complete control over the domain and the ability to change the membership of each domain administrative account. So the company greatly prevents these accounts from being hacked by cybercriminals.

4. Emergency Accounts

This type of privileged account provides unprivileged users with access to administrative to secure the system in case of an emergency. This type is generally known as a “firewall” or “break glass” account. This emergency account requires approval from the managerial, so this manual process becomes inefficient and has no audit capability.

5. Service Accounts

This account is utilized by applications or services to interact with operating systems in the form of privileged local or domain accounts. Because local service accounts interact with various Windows components, it’s difficult to coordinate password changes. Additionally, local service accounts can interact with various Windows components, making coordinating password changes difficult.

6. Active Directory or Domain Service Accounts

This account makes password change more difficult because it requires coordination across multiple systems. This makes passwords rarely changed because they will pose significant risks throughout the company.

7. Applications Accounts

This type of privileged account will be used by applications to access databases running batch jobs or scripts or provide access to other applications. Applications accounts usually have extensive access to basic company information in applications and databases. Passwords for these accounts are frequently embedded and kept in unencrypted text files, making them more vulnerable to hacking by hackers.

Those are the types or types of privileged accounts common in the company. Your company can implement Privileged Access Management to improve the security of privileged accounts. Aplikas Servis Pesona is one of the subsidiary companies of Phintraco Group, providing IT security solutions, one of which is privileged access management solutions.

Contact us via email at marketing@phintraco.com to get more information about privileged access management.

Reference:

https://www.cyberark.com/press/cyberark-survey-shows-majority-organizations-underestimate-scope-privileged-account-security-risk/